Ground Zero cancer victims call for help with medical costs

Updated
September 06, 2011 10:25:00

In the ten years since the September 11 attacks in the United States killed 3,000 people, a thousand more deaths have reportedly resulted from injuries and illnesses connected with the toxic site. Families of affected Ground Zero workers diagnosed with cancer are calling on Washington to pay their medical expenses.

TONY EASTLEY: For many of the firefighters, police and construction workers who were called to Ground Zero after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the tenth anniversary later this week is a bitter time.

The attacks killed 3,000 people but since that day the families of Ground Zero workers claim that injuries and illnesses from the toxic site have killed another 1,000 Americans.

The families of workers diagnosed with cancer are demanding that Washington step in to pay their medical expenses.

North America correspondent Craig McMurtrie reports.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: At a town called Babylon on Long Island, a tall, pale man - his head shaved - sits down to tell me his story.

It wasn't so long ago that Jeff Stroehlein was a fit New York Firefighter.

He moves heavily. He seems exhausted.

JEFF STROEHLEIN: They say 3,000 people died, that was basically that day.

They're still dying, first responders are dying. I mean, people are dying.

They're just kinda being ignored.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: In March he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He's just undergone a bone marrow transplant. He blames the week he spent on the bucket line at Ground Zero after 9/11.

JEFF STROEHLEIN: With planes and cabinets and body parts and all this stuff disappearing into mid-air and you're telling us it's fine to breathe.

I mean, you know... what do you take people for?

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: His wife Margaret is a nurse. She knows there's a $200,000 bill coming for the transplant. She doesn't know if their insurer will pay it.

MARGARET STROEHLEIN: They were all heroes of that day and now they're just kinda forgotten and nobody wants to deal with this big issue and it's really, really sad.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: It's estimated that over a thousand of the tens of thousands who worked on the pile after 9/11 have since died from Ground Zero-related conditions.

Washington has set aside $4 billion to compensate the families and cover future medical bills, but cancer treatment is excluded.

And that infuriates John Feal, a construction worker who lost part of a foot in an accident at the site. He doesn't have cancer but has become a leading campaigner for those who worked there.

JOHN FEAL: Every toxin that was in the air, that went airborne when everything was crushed and pulverised, take them individually and put them in a bottle. You'd have a skull and crossbones on it. And it'd say 'Harmful if swallowed, could cause cancer.'

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: Nearby there's a clinic, supported by federal funds, that specialises in Ground Zero cases. Dr Benjamin Luft has 6,000 patients and he's convinced that there is a link but says proving it is difficult.

BENJAMIN LUFT: I believe that in time we will establish that relationship but that it will take a period of time to do so.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: He says the hardest part of his job is telling a cancer patient they're not entitled to federal support.

BENJAMIN LUFT: Patients will be devastated as a result of their diseases. And not only that, but they'll be devastated because of the economical consequences of having those diseases.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: The New York Fire Department is due to release an analysis of its growing number of 9/11 cases this month.

The families hope that Congress will change its mind before the end of the year.

But Jeff Stroehlein's frustration that it's taken this long is obvious.

JEFF STROEHLEIN: They can say what they want, there is a direct link. There's over 345 first responders died of cancer. You can't tell me that these people were going to die of cancer normally.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: It wasn't so long ago that he felt like a 9/11 hero. Now at 47 he's had to retire and he's fighting for his life.